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Revenge

“…O Eternal God of vengeance, O God who sets things right, shine upon us.Rise, O Judge who presides over the earth, and pronounce Your sentence upon the proud. Give them what they deserve! How long, O Eternal One, how long will the guilty revel in their prosperity? …”PS 94:1-3

In the Hebrew Scriptures we read, no less than thirty-two times from Genesis to Nahum, about vengeance and revenge. Yet in the Gospels, in the teachings of Christ, we read time and again about forgiveness. What gives? Did God have a change of heart in the 400 years between Malachi and Matthew?

Life offers us plenty of opportunities to feel unforgiving, our stories each hold room to prove this point. The trouble is that a lack of forgiveness does more damage to us than we maybe realize. Forgiveness is not forgetting or walking away from accountability or condoning a hurtful act; it's the process of taking back and healing our lives so we can truly live~ B Brown

When we don't forgive, we grow hardened, untrusting, sour, and bitter. We might even become vengeful. That’s not a role we were designed, by our Creator, to hold. Peace be with you...#Pkes

The Christian life is not just about a personal relationship with God, even if personal faith and responsibility are absolutely necessary. When too much emphasis is placed on a privatize salvation, we run the potential of getting so much wrong.

Avoid the draw to escape church citizenry. Becoming a disciple of Christ was never meant to be a solo expedition. Doing so means we expose ourselves to totally missing the opportunity to see the Eternal and His Holy Spirit in action: in real communities, in actual churches, in non-partisan politics, in obvious differences, in honest-to-goodness marriages, in authentic social discussions and during hard theological disagreements. You can't go it alone. Following Jesus shouldn’t be about intellectual assent, but rather it's communal activity, where-by we help ensure we don’t run the risk of missingthe Word who came to dwell among us. Consider that believing in Jesus and being mentored by the Holy Ghost is largely a group activity, albeit a…

Are you holding a close secret? Are you mum on something you're not supposed to tell anyone? If you’re like many folks I’ve met, you’re holding ‘something or other’ pretty close to your vest. And in doing so, as SNL’s Mike Myers would say: “Oh, I'm getting a little verklempt (farklempt). Most stuff is worth sharing, especially with the right person. While sharing personal “stuff” might seem like an invasion of privacy, it’s so worth the “vulnerability hangover”It’s worth being misunderstood and misrepresented. There’s desirability in discomfort. It's worth the death of your self-image and maybe even your brand. There’s benefit to owning up to what’s inside, no matter how difficult, because as the Psalmist wrote: Hidden things will always come out into the open. Secret things will come to light and be exposed.[1] Secrets bring bondage, sharing brings freedom. Freedom. Here’s what happens when you finally drop the act, when you finally admit that you're not fine, when you …

“..Like a sheep to a shearing, like a lamb to be slaughtered, he went—oh so quietly, oh so willingly..”The crucifixion of Christ, the awful marriage of human sinfulness and the pinnacle of divine grace, must remain an enduring mystery, a mystery of my faith — Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. Good Friday calls on me to take another look, to remember, His death. ~Selah~ So in my exuberance to treasure all the beauty that is Easter, I must be careful not to scurry past Good Friday. Easter alone does not make Christianity unique. It’s Good Friday, coupled with Easter, where we find the uniqueness of Christianity. As you contemplate the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus, I pray that God will reveal his unfathomable love for you in new ways. May you know the love of the one who gave his life for you…#Pkes #MinMChurch #MetroLifeChurch